Noel Rock: Nobody wants to be the bad news story of a boundary review

Every single vote, house, street, housing estate matters; a transfer of even 500 votes can be crucial to whether a seat is held or lost, writes Noel Rock

Noel Rock represented Fine Gael in Dublin North-West from 2016 to 2020. He writes that, upon seeing the 2017 boundary review, 'I knew the seat was likely gone, and yet I had to plough on for the remaining three years of my term'. Picture: Gareth Chaney/Collins

Refresh. Refresh. Refresh. Hours had passed since I started refreshing the page for the Boundary Review in 2017, as I knew it all hung in the balance, and still the screen was blank. 

Waiting for this report took me back to when I was 17, waiting for the CAO points: constantly refreshing the page and waiting for a result of something that is entirely out of your control. That said, like the CAO points, you could always figure a broad indication in advance of what the likely outcomes were.